Quotes About War

Look at an infantryman's eyes and you can tell how much war he has seen.

War, except in self-defense, is a failure of moral imagination.

No one is my enemy or the Gospel's... just prisoners of war that Christ longs to set free.

Thus begins a sideshow to the war itself: the undercover battle led by William Donovan and the OSS to ensure that Eastern Europe fall into the hands of Soviet Russia.

The mere thought that the fighting will soon end fills Patton with dread. "Peace is going to be hell on me," he writes to his wife, Beatrice.

Immediately after the war, a group of Jewish partisans known as the Nokmim traveled throughout Germany and Austria hunting down former members of the SS. Also known as the Avengers, this band of mercenaries paid by the government of Great Britain made northern Italy their home base.3

Starvation, literal starvation, was doing its deadly work. So depleted and poisoned was the blood of many of Lee's men from insufficient and unsound food that a slight wound which would probably not have been reported at the beginning of the war would often cause blood poison, gangrene, and death," one Confederate general will later write.

Christmas Eve is known throughout Germany, ends late for Adolf Hitler. It is four o'clock on Christmas morning as he slowly ascends the stairs from his War Room and readies himself for bed. Rising at noon, the man who seeks to remove any sort of religious tone from Christmas6 receives the news that Peiper and his division have escaped entrapment.

Now, the same Klaus Barbie who took glee in murdering innocent children, is employed—and protected—by the U.S. government.

I reported to headquarters: 'You know you're working with a real war criminal?' The answer comes back: 'Yes, we know all about it. But he's still valuable.

I took some heat from the far right, but my strategy is clear: If traditionalists want to win the culture war, they must fight with honor, because honor, as the true traditionalist understands, is a hallmark of America.

These four men—Bormann, Mengele, Barbie, Eichmann—are among the thousands of SS war criminals slipping quietly into the shadows. The Nazi postwar machine will help these war criminals gain passports, cross borders, and build new lives in sympathetic nations. To counter that, a small band of men who will soon call themselves "Nazi hunters" are organizing teams of assassins and kidnappers. The killing of the SS is about to begin.

If you have not lost your self-control, and sensibly conceive what this might lead to, then, Mr. President, we and you ought not to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war, because the more the two of us pull, the tighter the knot will be tied. And a moment may come when that knot will be tied so tight that even he who tied it will not have the strength to untie it, and then it will be necessary to cut that knot.

These four men—Bormann, Mengele, Barbie, Eichmann—are among the thousands of SS war criminals slipping quietly into the shadows.

In 1953, the Central Intelligence Agency pronounced: "We are not in the business of hunting war criminals.

The 1930s taught us a clear lesson: Aggressive conduct, if allowed to grow unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war. This nation is opposed to war. We are also true to our word. Our unswerving objective, therefore, must be to prevent the use of these missiles against this or any other country and to secure their withdrawal or elimination from the Western Hemisphere.

Many are convinced that the Second World War will be the war to end all wars, but Patton knows better. As a reminder to himself that war is inevitable, he has been reading Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars each night before bed. The memoir recounts Caesar's battles in Gaul4 and Germany from 58 to 51 BC. The words rise up off the page for Patton, and he feels a personal connection to the action.

He oversaw American forces in the Korean War

But Hitler is not tranquil. His right eardrum was ruptured in the bomb blast during the assassination attempt and has only recently stopped bleeding. That same blast hurled him to a concrete floor, bruising his buttocks "as blue as a baboon's behind" and filling his legs with wooden splinters as it ripped his black uniform pants to shreds. However

For years after the war, he was protected by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and its leader, Allen Dulles, who paid him a lavish $1,700 per month to spy on the new French government.

Skorzeny recounts his escapades in

infantry, cavalry, and artillery begin slogging

In all, eighty-four Americans are murdered in cold blood in what will come to be known as the Malmedy Massacre.

Americans despise cowards," Patton continued all those months ago, putting his own spin on U.S. history. "Americans play to win all the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American.